Saturday, January 7, 2012

Blue ice

A colleague of mine is occasionally engaged in oceanographic campaigns in Antarctica. A couple of years ago he found himself revisiting an area that he had seen for the first time some 20 years earlier. Coming back, he told me many stories about his travel; of how he had seen his old oceanographic ship, his colleagues on board..... After that, he became pensive and he told me, "You know, the worst is not that each year there is more free sea. 20 years ago, the icebergs were white. Now they are blue." I said, "yes," and we both remained silent.

The color of the ice is related the amount of air which remains trapped inside. As the ice is trapped in higher depths and is more compressed, the air escapes and the ices becomes more and more blue. Those icebergs seen by my colleague hadn't seen the light of the sun for a long time; perhaps centuries......

Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome and the author of "Extracted: how the quest for mineral resources is plundering the Planet" (Chelsea Green 2014)

Ugo Bardi's blog

The depletion of the cheap ores which we have been extracting up to now is at the root of our economic problems.

Extracted

A report to the Club of Rome published by Chelsea Green. (click on image for a link)

Solarino

Cassandra

This blog was known as "Cassandra's Legacy" up to March 2014. It has changed name, but not its ideas. And don't forget that Cassandra's prophecies always turned out to be right!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(littlewhirlything)unifi.it.